Wednesday 15 March 2017Title: Photographs as Contemporary Sources of the History of Swaziland: Vidudusi Images of the Makers of Swaziland's Pre-Independence ConstitutionSpeaker: Hlengiwe Dlamini (University of the Free State)Venue: Room 213, Benito Khotseng BuildingTime: 16:00

About Stanley Trapido

On Monday 11 August 2014, the International Studies Group and the History Department hosted Professor Charles van Onselen, who delivered the inaugural Stanley Trapido seminar. The seminar honours the life and work of one of the most important and influential historians South Africa has ever produced.

Born in Krugersdorp in 1933, Stanley Trapido studied at the University of the Witwatersrand and held posts at the University of Cape Town, University of Natal, University of Durham, and University of Oxford. Along with his wife, the Booker Prize-nominated author Barbara Trapido, Stan was an important figure among a small group of South African intellectuals who emigrated to England following the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. In England, Stan began to shape what is now known as the 'revisionist' school of South African historiography, arguing for the importance of analyses of capital and class formation, which he maintained informed the racial ideologies that culminated in apartheid.

As a researcher, Trapido was known for both his lucid writing style and his perfectionism. He published articles in leading international journals and co-edited (with Shula Marks) now canonical texts such as The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in 20th century South Africa. Avoiding the parochialism of much historical writing that is bound by the confines of the nation state, Trapido pushed himself and others to place South Africa’s industrialisation into comparative international perspective, drawing parallels from studies of American slavery, European economic development, and English working-class history. Among his broad research interests, he worked on: agricultural landlords, labour tenants, peasants, Afrikaner nationalism, and Dutch mercantile capitalism. He is perhaps best known for his work on the causes and consequences of the South African War of 1899-1902, and it was to this broad time period that Charles van Onselen spoke in his paper ‘The Political Economy of the South African Republic, 1881-1895.’

Van Onselen’s lecture provided a major reinterpretation of the origins and causes of the Jameson Raid, whilst emphasising that Paul Kruger’s ZAR was a state beset by crime and corruption. It was particularly fitting that Charles van Onselen gave the inaugural seminar paper, as Stanley Trapido supervised his Oxford doctoral thesis. The International Studies Group and the History Department were also honoured by Barbara Trapido’s attendance at the seminar, and wish to thank her for donating Stan’s academic library to the UFS.

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